


You notice everyone (but me)

by stellacanta



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 10:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15313275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellacanta/pseuds/stellacanta
Summary: Shinichi wasn't fond of the people Kaito dated. There always seemed to be something wrong with them.





	You notice everyone (but me)

**Author's Note:**

> ... so apparently the solution for angst is ... more angst! (But with fluff at the end lol)  
>  At least it's an actual Shinichi/Kaito relationship this time instead of a Shinichi & Kaito quasi-relationship courtesy of aromantic!Kaito?

They had been engaging in their usual post heist banter, when Kid stopped mid-sentence and looked down at his watch (which was beeping at him) with a frown. “Eh,” he couldn’t help but ask, taken slightly off guard by the beeping. “What do you need an alarm for, thief? Haven’t you stolen the gem already?”

Kid just hummed as he squinted at the watch face on his wrist before he looked back towards to the child-sized detective in front of him, his frown replaced by his usual smirk. “Well, it seems that we’ll have to cut our riveting conversation short, esteemed detective-”

“-huh, why?”

“-unfortunately, I have prior engagements that I must meet.” He barely caught the emerald brooch when it was flung at him by the white-clad thief. “Farewell, little detective. May we meet again under the moonlight.”

He didn’t stop Kid when the thief launched himself off the rooftop on his hang glider. His fingers curled tightly around the brooch as he stared after the figure of the thief that grew smaller and smaller in the early evening light. “Jeez, what prior engagements could you have had on a heist night?” The incident was strangely off-putting for him. He frowned as the speck that was Kid finally disappeared from the horizon and left the roof to return the brooch back to the inspector and team.

…

Kid had five more of these “engagements” that required him to leave early. He couldn’t help but joke if Kid’s girlfriend was going to be expecting him again the sixth time, to which Kid had bashfully apologized and admitted that there shouldn’t be any more interruptions of that kind in the future.

” _Good_ ,” he couldn’t help but think for himself as he smirked at Kid’s implicit confirmation that it _was_ a girlfriend that was making him leave early. “ _It was getting a bit annoying that she schedules their dates so close to heists anyway._ ”

……

Shinichi met Kaito’s second girlfriend when he had returned from being Conan and befriended the thief while they were sharing a statistics class in college. Kaito had been slightly late for their usual weekend meetup. Unfortunately, the reason why because increasingly clear when he noticed the girl tightly clutching Kaito’s left arm when the magician approached the table. “Ah, sorry I’m late.” Shinichi said nothing as he clenched his cup of coffee even tighter. “I ran into Mari on the way here, and she insisted on tagging along. I hope you don’t mind, Kudo.”

He couldn’t help but eye the way that Kaito’s girlfriend tightened her grasp on his arm as they sat down. Shinichi frowned. His coffee cup shook a little. “Ah,” he finally said much later as Kaito’s gaze bore into him when he had gone far too long without answering. “No, I don’t mind.” He ripped his gaze from where Kaito’s girlfriend was touching Kaito and looked towards his friend with a flat look. “A bit of warning would have been nice though, Kuroba. I thought you weren’t going to come.”

Kaito gave a bark of laughter. “Pfft, as if, Kudo. I’m only, what, 10-15 minutes late? I’d at least doing you the decency of calling you if I wasn’t going to show up.” He looked as if he was going to continue saying something when his girlfriend tugged rather harshly on his arm. Shinichi didn’t miss the brief look of pain that crossed his face before he smoothed it away with an awkward laugh. “Oh, you’ve probably haven’t met Mari before. Mari, this is Shinichi Kudo, a good friend of mine. Kudo, meet Mari Yamamoto, my girlfriend.”

“Ah, pleased to meet you Mr. Kudo.” Shinichi frowned at the appellation he was given (and at how Kaito’s girlfriend refused to let go of his arm).

“Kudo’s fine,” he couldn’t help but retort. “Mr. Kudo is what everyone calls my father.” In the background, he could hear Kaito chuckling at his response. The chuckling was quickly cut off with a sharp inhale. Shinichi looked at his friend with a raised eyebrow. Did his girlfriend just hit him? He didn’t see any bruises on his face, although, given by how his girlfriend still hadn’t let go of his arm this entire time, maybe she had squeezed too tightly?

“Oh, I’m sorry, Kudo,” the girlfriend’s voice quickly brought him out of his thoughts. “I’ll keep that in mind for the future.”

Shinichi couldn’t help but wonder just how many more of these meetings she planned to show up at. Sure, he might have been okay with her showing up once, but that didn’t mean she could come along every day. He shot Kaito a flat look that either Kaito missed or choose to ignore. When the magician choose to change to subject to their last statistics lecture, he choose to take two big gulps of his coffee instead of saying anything.

…

Kaito’s girlfriend showed up on and off for another two months of their meetings. For the times she wasn’t there, she would make sure to call Kaito almost every ten minutes. He had never gotten so annoyed of a stupid ring tone in his life. The phone calls became a point of contention in their meetings, a tension that wouldn’t quite dissipate. Shinichi wanted him to just turn off his phone already if she was going to call so much. Kaito refused, he didn’t want to miss any important calls that might come through.

Secretly, Shinichi thought that Kaito’s girlfriend was a bit too clingy, and wondered if he was going to end up investigating the murder of his friend.

Kaito was a bit sullen the day he collapsed into the seat across from him and admitted that he and his girlfriend had broken up. “It had been going so well too,” the magician whined. “We really liked each other and had so much in common, but no apparently I wasn’t paying enough attention to her and making her feel loved or something.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s a good thing that you two broke up when you did. She seemed a bit clingy and if she thought that you weren’t paying her enough attention,” he cut himself off when he noticed the unimpressed glare he was being given. “What?”

Kaito was silent for a good minute or so. “Oy Kudo, I wanted you to comfort me, not to go on a jealousy fueled rant.” Shinichi was left sputtering as Kaito dropped his head back into his arms and resumed his whining.

……

Shinichi was staring at his phone with a frown right as it rang. He scowled when he saw who it was from, just the person he had hoped for a call from incidentally. “You know, if you’re _this_ bad with time, I would have thought you would have gotten a watch by now. Where are you, Kuroba? I thought we agreed to meet at the clock outside of the shopping center at 10 to pick out a gift for your mom. It’s 10:23 right now.”

“Ah, sorry Kudo, I didn’t mean to call you so late.” From the background noises it was clear that Kaito was walking in a crowded place. There was a woman’s voice whispering close by the receiver. Shinichi froze. A woman’s voice? It couldn’t have been Kaito’s mom since the voice was rather young, he couldn’t help but notice how Kaito didn’t seem annoyed with the voice and in fact chuckled a bit when the voice was whispering ‘let me talk to them, let me talk to them’ right by the receiver. It couldn’t be- “uh, I ran into Sara on my way here, and kinda lost track of the time. Um, Sara Takahashi? You know, the engineering upperclassman I talked about who helped me study for the midterms?” In the background, he heard a clear ‘hi’ followed by a ‘hmm, who are you talking to Kaito’.

He listened as Kaito badly muffled the receiver and murmured back ‘ah, I’m talking to Kudo, you know, the friend I’m always talking about’. It was quickly followed by a ‘oh that Kudo’ and then a loud ‘hi Kudo’ directly into the receiver. Shinichi winced at the sound. She didn’t have to shout it into the phone. Kaito took the phone back a moment later and continued as if Shinichi wasn’t almost deafened by his girlfriend, “yeah, so sorry about that. I didn’t mean to just ditch you like that. Uh, are you still there by the clock? I’m maybe just a few minutes away, I can meet up with you there and we can go shopping for a gift for mom together.”

Shinichi pushed down the dark feelings that bubbled up when he heard Kaito and Sara converse energetically in the background. Kaito really sucked at muffling the receiver. “No,” he said, feeling almost as if he were speaking from far away. “You don’t have to come. There’s a novel I’ve been meaning to finish anyway.”

“Hmm, Kudo?”

“Go have fun on your date with your girlfriend, Kuroba. Don’t worry about me.” He hung up the phone even as he heard Kaito ask him to wait for a moment. Shinichi looked up at the cloudy sky for a long moment before he set off on the way back home. This had been the third meeting that Kaito had canceled on out of the blue, he should have known that Kaito had a girlfriend that had been taking up his time. (Good for him.) A girlfriend that he was having more fun with than with Shinichi. He gripped his phone tighter and gave a dry chuckle when he felt something wet hit his face. Ah, he should have brought an umbrella.

…

He couldn’t find it in himself to care when Kaito chided him the next time they met for hanging up like that, didn’t he know that Kaito had spotted him in the crowd under the clock? He just made a noncommittal noise and Kaito had sighed, wondering what was wrong with him. He couldn’t help but think about how happy Kaito sounded on the phone with his girlfriend.

He was happy for the pair, really. They seemed so good together.

He told himself this when he met Sara Takahashi in person for the first time and watched the pair of them playfully feed each other ice cream and talk selfies. He told himself this whenever Kaito ditched him for a date with his girlfriend. He told himself this whenever Kaito went on and on about how much fun he had with her on their last date. They made a good couple, but it still didn’t stop the bitter feelings that bubbled up inside whenever he saw them or Kaito missed yet another meeting.

When they had a mutual break up almost half a year later, he couldn’t help but feel relieved. She was making him miss too many meetings with his friends anyway.

……

There was something about the sight of Kaito in love that seemed to make him glow (as much as a person could glow). There was an air of calm around the normally rambunctious magician. He smiled more, seemed happier. Kaito, when he wasn’t in love was handsome, but Kaito in love was breathtaking.

Unfortunately, Kaito in love also brought along with it the annoying fact of Kaito dreamily talking about how wonderful the object of his affection was to anyone near him. In this case, Shinichi.

Shinichi tried to grin when Kaito went on and on about Morita, a girl in his chemistry class. He was sure that the grin looked more like a grimace.

For his part, Kaito didn’t seem to notice as he sighed over the girl’s long and beautiful hair, and about the way she would tuck it behind her ear just so when deep in thought. The cup of coffee in his hands wobbled dangerously at the wistful stare in Kaito’s eyes as he spoke about how, despite her cool exterior, she had a soft spot for the pigeons in the park and could always be found where they were gathered. It wobbled dangerously enough for some coffee to spill onto the hand holding the cup.

Shinichi hastily set the cup down with a hiss as Kaito looked at him in mild concern. “Huh? Kudo? Have you not been getting enough sleep? I haven’t known you to spill coffee over yourself like that.”

He waved off his friend’s concern. “No, I’m just- a bit stressed lately. Don’t worry about it.” Kaito simply ignored him as he procured some napkins from somewhere (who knows, maybe napkins were some kind of magician’s prop) and began to wipe up the small mess that was made. He tried not to flush when Kaito grabbed his hand and looked over it.

“Huh, it’s a bit red, but nothing cold water can’t fix.” Kaito looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Are you sure you’re okay though, because-“

“-I’m fine,” Shinichi snapped with more force than usual. “Besides we’re here to work on our contemporary literature homework together, not to talk about how stressed I am.” He yanked his hand out of a dumbfounded Kaito’s grasp.

“Or listen to me go on and on about my new girlfriend, I take it. Sorry Kudo, I got a little carried away there.” Kaito gave an awkward little laugh as he looked to his backpack at the side of the table and how he still hadn’t grabbed his things out of it. “And I haven’t even gotten my things out yet. Woops. Sorry about that again, Kudo. I know your time is precious and all that.” Shinichi scowled slightly but didn’t say a thing as Kaito took his books and notebooks and pencils and pens out of the backpack. He wasn’t about to say it, but good on Kaito for picking up on just what was wrong anyway. “And it’s not that I don’t cherish what precious little time we get together, I do. It’s just that Morita is- she’s- well,” Kaito cut himself off as he looked down at the table, a wistful look in his face. “She’s perfect and I sometimes have to pinch myself to make me realize this isn’t a dream.”

Shinichi didn’t say anything as his hands curled into fists. No one was perfect. Hadn’t he seen enough murders to realize that everyone was hiding some deep, dark secret? If he dug deep enough, he was sure he would find enough skeletons in her closet to make Kaito run away in heartbroken disgust. (Certainly, no one was perfect enough to put _that_ kind of look on Kaito’s face.)

He relaxed his hands when Kaito looked up at him. His face had smoothed into a look of polite disinterest when Kaito spoke. “So, about question number 15-“

……

“So, we broke up,” Kaito said, apropos of nothing one day. “And before you say anything, it was mutual and there were no hard feelings.” Shinichi looked at Kaito and felt like breaking something. (Preferably, a certain someone’s face.) Mutual, huh? If it was mutual then why did Kaito look and sound like a kicked puppy right now? “Apparently, she had a guy that she liked from her hometown. They went way back too, grade school almost. He transferred to our college just this semester and they ran into each other. He hadn’t forgotten about her too. It was pretty clear she just wasn’t into our relationship towards the end, and she’d obviously be happier with him.”

Shinichi watched him with concern and no small amount of anger as Kaito chuckled brokenly and shook his head. “Well, it’s no use crying over it, and it’s not like I didn’t break down and cry about it a good hour after we broke up at home. I love her too much to stand in the way of her happiness like that, it’s-“ Kaito shook his head and looked down at the table, one side of his faced propped up against a hand. “-it sounds silly, but, I just wish that I had someone who was willing to stick with me like that.” Kaito sighed and looked up at Shinichi ruefully. “Sorry, sorry, I know this is supposed to be our friendly hangout time and not ‘listen to Kuroba whine about his lackluster love life and how he’s never going to find a long-term girlfriend at this rate because he’s not good enough’ time.”

“You are good enough!”

Kaito looked taken aback by the sudden outburst. “Huh?”

Shinichi sighed and shook his head. “You _are_ good enough, Kaito. You’re always attentive to your girlfriends’ needs and you don’t complain when they show up suddenly or when they drag you off places. You fawn over them and make them feel like they’re the only person in the world who matters. I-“ _wish you would see yourself the way that I see you. I wish you would look back whenever I look at you._ He cut himself off. Oh. He found himself suddenly unable to meet Kaito’s gaze. “-err, I think you’re being too hard on yourself, Kuroba. You’re good looking, kind, and have a good sense of humor, so I’m sure you’ll find someone soon enough.”

Kaito was blinking at him when Shinichi looked towards him. “You just called me Kaito instead of Kuroba.”

Now it was Shinichi’s turn to look surprised. “Huh?”

“Just now, you called me Kaito instead of Kuroba.” A wide smile like the sun peeking out from behind the clouds broke on Kaito’s face. (Shinichi didn’t want to say that it was breathtaking and disarming, but it was.) “Wow, it’s taken how long for us to reach this point now? Does this mean I can call you Shinichi instead of Kudo?” Shinichi gave him an unimpressed stare. Kaito laughed. (And wasn’t that the most perfect sound in the universe.) “Anyway, I didn’t think you had it in you to comfort a guy like that. Where was this when I broke up with Mari way back when?”

Shinichi ignored the jibe and looked down at the slice of lemon pie on the plate in front of him. It was good that Kaito was back to his usual self again. His ex-girlfriend was a terrible person for stringing him along like that, when she had someone else in her heart, and then breaking his heart like that. “Anyway, I was wondering what you thought about Professor Yamada’s lecture on Friday. Oh, and there was a new crime thriller that got released this week that maybe we could go watch. I know the book it’s based off of and I wanted to see how it paired up. Apparently, the reviews have been-“

He didn’t notice the thoughtful look that Kaito was giving him.

……

Ran had dragged him to a bar to celebrate the end of the year (in her words). Somehow, he had managed to lose sight of his childhood friend in the crowded bar. (Apparently, other people had the exact same idea.) He scanned the crowd looking for her and nearly spat out his drink when he found Kaito Kuroba sitting in a table towards the edge of the room, a fairly muscular man all but hanging off of him. Since when did Kaito have an interest towards guys?

The two were talking in low tones and playfully teasing each other. The man seemed intent to crawl into Kaito’s lap, but Kaito was only barely managing to keep him from doing that. Whether it was out of coyness or because of disinterest was hard to see in the darkness. Shinichi had stood up and was crossing the room before he realized it.

His gaze and Kaito’s met in one brief but illuminating moment. Kaito’s eyes widened. By now he was close enough to hear what they were saying.

“Oh, come on babe, a guy like you shouldn’t be sitting here all on his lonesome like this,” the man purred into Kaito’s ears.

“He’s not alone,” Shinichi cut in smoothly, attracting the man’s gaze to him, although his was firmly locked with Kaito’s. “He’s with me.”

The man frowned. “Oh? Hard to believe when he’s been sitting here alone like this for a while now.”

“Yes, well it’s true.” He turned towards Kaito, “sorry honey, I just got finished with work and didn’t see you in the crowds. Forgive me?” He pressed a chaste kiss to Kaito’s lips. Shinichi hadn’t intended for it to mean anything more, but he found himself wanting more when they broke apart. He frowned.

“Mmm, yeah,” Kaito said, a rather distracting blush dusting his cheeks. “It’s fine. I don’t mind waiting, I know you’ve been busy and all that. I’m glad you were able to come though.” Kaito had always been a good actor, but Shinichi couldn’t tear his eyes off his lips and the light blush.

The man made a noise of displeasure and detangled himself from Kaito. “Ugh, fine. I get it. Don’t need to mark your territory like that, _men_ I swear.”

Shinichi ignored him as he helped Kaito stand up and guided him out of the bar.

“You realize that was my first kiss right,” Kaito said when the chilly air hit them.

“Wait, what?!”

Kaito chuckled. “It was my first kiss with a guy. Do keep up, Shinichi.”

“Err right.” Shinichi didn’t think that it was his first kiss with anyone either. After all, the guy had so many girlfriends-

“I take it that this means you’re interested in starting a relationship with me Shinichi,” Kaito said, interrupting his thoughts. There was a playful glint in his eyes when he looked towards Shinichi. “I suspected that you might have feelings for me due to how you reacted after my break up with Morita. I take it from the actions tonight, that this won’t be the _only_ time we kiss. Because I’d really like another one of those.”

“I-“ Shinichi wasn’t sure how to react. “-I thought you liked girls. I only did it to get you out of there.”

Kaito laughed. “Oh I swing both ways actually, and I had ways to get out of that situation. You didn’t need to break into there like that. Besides-“ He slipped his hands into Shinichi’s. “-we’ve been together for so long that I don’t think dating would change much.” A pause. “Well, there’d be sex and kissing. It’d be our current relationship with added sex and kissing.”

“I should find Ran first. She came with me, but I seem to have lost her in the crowds inside.”

Kaito chuckled as he swung their entangled hands together and lead them back inside. “Well,” he said just outside the doorway, looking at Shinichi with the warmest smile he had ever seen. “Let’s make Mouri the first to find out about us okay?”

Kaito really was dazzling when he was in love, Shinichi thought to himself.

……

Kaito thought Shinichi in love was just as wonderful.

 

 


End file.
